The Gryphon's Skull

by H. N. Turteltaub

  “All right,” his cousin said.

  Menedemos laughed. “ 'All right? Is that the best you can manage? Before we got here, you would have been happy to skip this town and head straight for Cape Sounion, and you know it as well as I do.”

  “I still want to go,” Sostratos said, sounding like a man doing his best not to sound annoyed. “You're making it seem as though I can't tear myself away from Metrikhe, and that isn't true.”

  “Well, maybe not.” Menedemos laughed again. “You do come up for air every now and then—the way a dolphin does before it dives deep into the sea. Except you're diving deep into her—”

  “Leave it alone, would you please?” Now Sostratos did sound annoyed.

  Since irking his cousin was what Menedemos had had in mind, he did change the subject... in a way: “You've got to admit, we did the right thing coming here. Besides making you sleep like a dead man every night, we've unloaded most of the silk for a better price than we ever thought we'd get, and all but two of the emeralds. We'll show a profit when we get home. Our fathers won't have anything to complain about.” Keeping his father from having anything to complain about was one of his main goals in life. Trouble was, Philodemos complained whether he had anything to complain about or not.

  “You could have sold those last two stones,” Sostratos said. “One of them's the best of the lot, isn't it?”

  “Yes, it is—and I know I could have,” Menedemos said. “But I kept thinking: if I'm getting these prices in Miletos, what would I get in Athens? This polis hasn't been anything special for a long time—”

  “Since before the Persian Wars,” Sostratos said.

  “That's a long time,” Menedemos said. Somewhere close to two hundred years, he thought. Before his cousin could tell him exactly how long—to the hour, as likely as not—he went on, “Let's save a couple, anyhow, for a really big polis, a really rich polis. Maybe we'll do better with them there.”

  “Maybe we will,” Sostratos agreed. “We couldn't very well try selling them in Alexandria. It's the richest city in the world, but...”

  “Yes. But,” Menedemos said. “If we showed up with Egyptian emeralds in Ptolemaios' capital, people would wonder how we got them, and they'd take us apart trying to find out. I don't think I'd care to answer those kinds of questions.”

  “Neither do I,” Sostratos said.

  Menedemos pointed a finger at him. “Would your hetaira want to buy one of the emeralds? I'd bet she's got the cash for it.”

  “I'm sure Metrikhe has the cash for it,” his cousin answered. “I mentioned them to her the other day, as a matter of fact. She said, 'They sound very pretty. I'll have to see if one of my friends will buy some for me.'

  “Did she?” Menedemos laughed once more. “Sounds like she'd make a splendid merchant if she were a man—never use your own money when you can use someone else's instead.”

  “She would. I'm sure of it,” Sostratos said. “And I don't think she'll be poor after her looks go, either. She'll use what she's got wisely.”

  “Oh, I don't know. How can you be so sure?” Menedemos said. “Look what she's doing with you—giving it away for nothing. If that's not bad business, I don't know what is.”

  Sostratos turned red. Menedemos grinned; he'd hoped that would embarrass his cousin. “If she wants to be foolish that particular way, I won't complain,” Sostratos said.

  “No, eh?” Menedemos said. Sostratos tossed his head. Menedemos' grin got wider, not least to hide his annoyance that Sostratos had had such luck here and he hadn't. He'd even hinted a couple of times that he would like to meet Metrikhe—in a purely social way, of course. But Sostratos had made a point of not inviting him along when he went calling. Do you think I'd try to take your woman away? Would I do such a thing to my own cousin? Menedemos knew himself well enough to answer that honestly: if she were pretty enough. I

  “Exactly when were you planning to sail?” Sostratos asked.

  “Day after tomorrow,” Menedemos answered. “I was thinking we'd spend tomorrow in the agora, try to move as much as we can— silk, dye, perfume—”

  “Balsam,” Sostratos broke in. “We only have a little bit of balsam left. It's done well for us.”

  “It has, hasn't it?” Menedemos said. “I wish we'd bought more from those Phoenicians. Physicians and priests both snap it up. I hadn't expected quite so much demand.”

  “Neither had I,” Sostratos said. “It's the perfect sort of thing for us to carry, though: it isn't bulky, and it's worth a lot. We ought to see if we can get more next year. We'd make money on it.”

  “Himilkon would probably be able to find some for us,” Menedemos said. “All sorts of strange things come out of the east and end up in his warehouse. Peafowl, for instance.”

  “Don't remind me,” Sostratos shuddered. He'd cared for the peafowl on the journey to Great Hellas the year before, and would likely spend the rest of his days trying to forget the experience. After a deep breath, he went on, “It might be worth our while to go east next spring and see if we can buy direct. Engedi, where the stuff comes from, is somewhere in Phoenicia, isn't it?”

  “In it or near it,” Menedemos said. “I'm pretty sure of that.” He stroked his chin. “If we took a cargo along, so we could sell as well as buy—”

  “Well, of course,” Sostratos said.

  “Yes, yes.” Slowly, Menedemos dipped his head. “We've talked about this once or twice before, in an idle sort of way, but now I'm starting to catch fire, I truly am. We could save a fortune in the middlemen's fees the Phoenicians charge.”

  “We'll have to talk to Himilkon when we get back to Rhodes— see what he can tell us about the country and its customs,” Sostratos said. “We'll have to hope it's not at war, too. If Ptolemaios decides to try to take it away from Antigonos, it's a good place to stay away from. We almost got stuck in their fight a couple of times this sailing season.”

  “We did get stuck at Kos,” Menedemos said.

  “So we did,” Sostratos said. “But it is a good idea, I think. Not that many Hellenes go there. We could make quite a profit. And we can stop in the cities of Cyprus on the way there and back. I think we should have an easy time persuading our fathers,”

  Menedemos made a sour face, his enthusiasm suddenly half quenched. “You can say that. Uncle Lysistratos is a pretty easygoing fellow. But trying to talk my father into anything ...” He tossed his head. “It's like trying to pound sense into a rock.”

  “I'm sure he says the same thing about you,” his cousin remarked.

  “What if he does?” Menedemos said. “I'm the one who's right.” Sostratos didn't argue with him. Menedemos assumed that meant his cousin thought he was right. That it might mean Sostratos merely thought there was no point to arguing never crossed his mind.

  The evening before they sailed, Diokles went through the brothels and taverns of Miletos, rounding up the Aphrodite's, crew. He made sure everybody was back aboard the merchant galley before she left the harbor. Menedemos clapped him on the back. “You go after them the way a hound goes after hares, and you dig them out wherever they hide.”

  “I know the spots,” the oarmaster answered. “I'd better, by the gods. When I pulled an oar myself, I spent enough time drinking and screwing in them, and hoping my officers wouldn't grab me and haul me away.”

  Not long after sunrise the next morning, the Aphrodite left Miletos. Some of the sailors looked wan and unhappy, but some of them were bound to look wan and unhappy going out of any port. Sostratos stared west across the water at a destination he could see only in his mind's eye. “Athens,” he murmured. “At last.”

  Menedemos gave him a quizzical look. “I've never seen anyone run so hard from a pretty girl, especially when nobody's running after you.

  His cousin shrugged. “Metrikhe was pleasant, but she was only a hetaira.”

  “Only, eh?” Menedemos gave a skeptical snort. “I suppose that's why you made such a point of not introducing me to her.”

/>   Sostratos turned red. Menedemos hid a smile. Coughing a couple of times, Sostratos said, “I did find her first, you know.” His voice got a little stronger, a little sharper: “And I don't see you introducing me to the women you meet at our stops.”

  “Well, my dear, you do get so tedious about meeting other men's wives,” Menedemos said, Sostratos coughed again, this time as if he were choking. He soon found an excuse to go forward. Menedemos grinned and gave his attention to the steering oars.

  Waves slapped the Aphrodite's starboard side as she made her way west across the Ikarian Sea. The sail now bellied full, now lay limp in a fitful breeze from out of the north. Menedemos kept six, sometimes eight, men a side on the oars to push the akatos along even when the breeze fell. To the north and northwest, Samos and Ikaria and several smaller islands reared out of the water as if their central hills were the notched backs of mythical beasts.

  Though the two were much of a size, Samos was an important place, Ikaria a backwater where nothing much ever happened. Here, Menedemos didn't need to ask his history-minded cousin why the neighboring islands differed so much, Samos had a good harbor. Ikaria didn't. As a result, it had no poleis, only a handful of villages and some herdsmen and their flocks. The world had passed it by, and the Aphrodite would do the same.

  The akatos put in at Patmos, a small island south of Ikaria, for the night. Patmos had a decent harbor—it boasted several bays a ship might enter, in fact—but very little else. It was dry and rocky, baked brown as a bread crust by the sun. As the Aphrodites anchors splashed into the sea, Sostratos looked over the desolate terrain and said, “Now I understand.”

  “Understand what?” Menedemos asked.

  “In the early days of the Peloponnesian War, a Spartan admiral named Alkidas was operating north of here, up near Ephesos,” his cousin answered. “In those days, the Athenian fleet was much stronger than Sparta's. The Athenian commander—his name was Pakhes—found out the Spartans were around. He chased them as far as Patmos here, but then he turned back,”

  Menedemos scratched his head. “I'm still not following you, my dear.”

  “He took one look at this place and then went away,” Sostratos said. “Wouldn't you?”

  “Oh.” Menedemos took another look at the island: at the rocks and the sand and the miserable little fishing village in front of which they were anchored. “A point. I wouldn't want to live out my days here, that's sure.”

  A few minutes later, just before the sun sank into the Aegean, a small boat put out from the village and made for the Aphrodite. As it drew near, one of the men inside called, “ 'Oo are you? Where are you comin' from? Where are you 'eaded for?” His dialect was odd: half Ionic, half Doric, and thoroughly rustic.

  After naming the merchant galley, Menedemos said, “We're out of Miletos, bound for Athens.”

  “Ah.” The local dipped his head. “All them big places. Don't 'ave much truck with 'em 'ere.” I believe that, Menedemos thought. If you weren't a day's nail out of Miletos, no one would ever have anything to do with you. The fellow in the boat asked, “What are you car-ryin'?”

  Sostratos spoke up: “Koan silk. Crimson dye. Rhodian perfume. Papyrus and ink. Fine balsam from Engedi. A lion's skin.” He didn't, Menedemos noted with amusement, mention the gryphon's skull. Was he afraid the people here might want to steal it? If he was, that had to be one of the more foolish fears Menedemos had ever heard of.

  “Fancy stuff,” the Patmian said. “I might've known. Thought you was a pirate when I first seen you.”

  Folk often made that mistake about the Aphrodite. Hearing of pirates got Menedemos' attention. “Have you seen any lately? Are they sailing in these waters?” he asked.

  “Every now and again,” the local answered, which might mean anything or nothing. He paused to spit into the sea, then asked a question of his own: “What d'you want for a jar o' your perfume? My woman'd take it right kindly if she got one.”

  “By the gods!” Menedemos muttered. “I never expected to do business here.”

  “Eight drakhmai,” Sostratos told the Patmian, as calmly as if he were dickering in the market square in Rhodes.

  Menedemos admired that calm. He also expected to see the local recoil in horror: a drakhma a day would keep a man and his family housed and fed, if not in fancy style. He looked toward the village again. Nothing here was fancy.

  But the man just shrugged and said, “Deal, pal. I got the silver. Don't hardly got nothin1 to spend it on, though. 'Ereabouts, we mostly just swap back and forth.” He nudged the other man in the boat, who started to row toward shore. Over his shoulder, he called, “Be right back.”

  “Will he?” Menedemos wondered. “Or is he without an obolos to his name, and just trying to save face in front of us?”

  Sostratos shrugged. “No way to tell. Either he'll come or he won't. If he does, I wonder what he'll use for money. They can't possibly mint coins here.”

  The boat beached itself a plethron or so from the Aphrodite. One of the men in it got out and went into a house close by the sea. The other man, the rower, sat in the boat, waiting. That made Menedemos begin to believe the first Patmian did have the money. And sure enough, as twilight began to deepen, he emerged from his house and trotted back to the boat. A moment later, it headed out toward the merchant galley.

  “Can I come aboard?” the local called as it drew near.

  “Come ahead,” Menedemos answered. The boat pulled up alongside the akatos' waist. One of the sailors reached out and helped haul the Patmian into the ship. He walked back to the stern and up onto the poop deck.

  “Hail,” Sostratos said.

  “ ‘Ail,” the Patmian replied. “You got the perfume there? .. . That's not what you'd call a right big jar, is it?”

  “It's the size we always sell,” Sostratos said, which was true. “There's not a whole lot left after they boil down the roses and mix the scent with oil. It will last you a while—your wife won't need much to make herself smell sweet.”

  Menedemos wondered how true that was. The local hadn't bathed any time recently, which meant the odds were good his wife hadn't, either. True, this was a dry island, but even so. ... There was no room to get upwind of the fellow, either. Menedemos did his best not to breathe.

  With sudden decision, the Patmian dipped his head. “All right. I'll take it.” He held out a couple of coins to Sostratos. Menedemos' cousin took them, hefted them, and handed the local the perfume. “Thank you kindly,” the fellow said. He scrambled back into the boat. When he and his friend beached it this time, they pulled it well up out of the water and they both went into the village.

  “What did he give you?” Menedemos asked.

  “See for yourself.” Sostratos set the coins on Menedemos' palm.

  In the fading light, Menedemos held them up close to his face. “A tetradrakhm from Corinth,” he said. “That's a pretty Pegasos on it. And another tetradrakhm from Aigina. Very nice—I'm always glad to get turtles, because they're so heavy.”

  “Notice anything unusual about this particular turtle?” Sostratos asked.

  “I didn't.” Menedemos looked more closely. “It's got a smooth shell.”

  “And flippers, not regular feet,” his cousin agreed. “It's a sea turtle, not a tortoise. Aigina hasn't made them like that since the days of the Persian Wars. I wonder how this one ended up here.”

  “I wouldn't be surprised if this fellow's five-times-great-grandfather stole it from an Aiginetan, and it's been here ever since,” Menedemos answered. “I'm just glad he's off my ship. Did you smell him?”

  “I could hardly help it.” Sostratos took back the coins. “However he got the silver, though, it doesn't stink.”

  “True.” Now Menedemos was the one who looked west, towards Athens. “A couple of nights at sea coming up.”

  “I think that's a better bet than going through the Kyklades again,” Sostratos said. “Too many pirates in those waters, and sooner or later we'd come across one who'd soo
ner fight than go the other way.”

  “That's what I think, too.” Menedemos took off his chiton and threw it down on the poop deck. “Might as well go to sleep now.”

  When he woke the next morning and untangled himself from the folds of his himation, he exclaimed in low-voiced delight as he stood by the rail and pissed into the harbor of Patmos. The breeze came out of the northeast, strong and with a certain feel to it that made him think it would hold all day. Every once in a while, such feelings let him down. More often than not, though, he gauged the wind rightly.

  Diokles looked up from the rower's bench where he'd passed the night. “Kind of day that makes you want to get out to sea as fast as you can,” he said.

  “I was thinking the same thing,” Menedemos said. The eastern sky was pink, but the sun wouldn't rise for some little while yet. He looked down at Sostratos, who still lay snoring on the poop deck, and stirred him with his foot.

  His cousin gasped and sputtered and opened his eyes. “What was that for?” he asked indignantly, sitting up.

  “What's the matter?” Menedemos was the picture of innocence. “Don't you want to go to Athens?”

  “I want you to go to the crows.” Sostratos got to his feet so quickly and fiercely, Menedemos wondered if he would have to fight his cousin. But then the angry glow faded from Sostratos' eyes. “That's a splendid wind, isn't it?”

  “Feels good to me,” Menedemos said. “The keleustes likes it, too. And I can't imagine anyone being sorry to get away from Patmos,”

  “All right.” Sostratos walked naked to the rail, as Menedemos had moments before. When he turned back, he said, “Let's start getting the sailors up.”

  Diokles had already started waking the ones who hadn't roused by themselves. They ate bread and oil, drank watered wine, and had the anchors hauled up and stowed by the time the sun crawled above the horizon. They didn't even have to row out of the harbor. It faced west, and the breeze carried the Aphrodite away from it as soon as the sail came down from the yard.